As previously announced, Sedo’s premium numeric domain auction has just opened for bidding. The auction ends on December 4th and features the following domain names:

• 024.org
• 10029.com
• 13.net
• 1500000.com
• 20032.com
• 25.com
• 40.com
• 44.ca
• 500.net
• 6801.com
• 70.com
• 79.net
• 88.com
• 94.com

Posted under Domain Sales

icrosoft has charged a Florida company with cybersquatting in a new lawsuit filed Wednesday reports IDG. In the lawsuit, Microsoft listed 23 domain names that it says are registered to Domain Investments and contain Microsoft trademarks or intentional misspellings of such names.
The domain names, all appearing to be cases of typosquatting, include windoesmobile.com, wwwhotmajl.com, microsoft-games.com and zunedrivers.com. Many of the sites include advertising for various products and services.

Microsoft has asked to be awarded the defendants’ profits from the sites plus damages to be determined at trial, or up to US$100,000 per domain name as well as an injunction against Domain Investments from infringing on Microsoft’s trademarks and from registering any additional URLs that contain Microsoft trademarks or misspellings of them.

Posted under Uncategorized

ervice allows you to get distribution for articles.

Domain parking alternative WhyPark has launched ContentPromote, a complementary solution to its main web site creation service. Essentially, users submit articles, blog posts, and other content to ContentPromote and then it is syndicated across WhyPark’s network of 50,000 domain names.

ContentPromote could be beneficial for improving search engine rankings. The pitch for the service includes:

-You get a one-way text link back to your website or blog at the bottom of each of your articles
- You may add a few sentence description of your blog or website to accompany each article
- A screenshot of your website is included with each post WhyPark syndicates and is also directly linked back to your website or blog
- You can update your site or blog description at anytime by logging into the ContentPromote website
- Your content is only syndicated on domains where the subject is relevant to your individual posts

This is a smart product for WhyPark. The company needs fresh content for its clients’ web sites. So far it has grabbed that content from article directories as well as signing agreements with press release services and premium article services. ContentPromote will take it one step further by syndicating “fresher” content.

Posted under Domain Parking

Last week there was only one Sedo sale beyond 15,000 EUR – this week there were seven with EverestBets.com, Internet.eu, Glow.co.uk, haarverlaengerung.de, mijn.nl, ggg.fr, and FlashPlayer.de all reaching the mark. Check out the full list after the jump.

Posted under Domain Sales

Marchex thinks “Local is the New Black”. Is it right?

2008 has been a hot year for geo domain names as internet advertising experts push local advertising as the next wave of internet advertising. Call it a coming out party: people have been successful with geo domains for over a decade but are finally getting recognition.

Perhaps it’s fitting that local-centric domain name and advertising company Marchex (NASDAQ: MCHX) filed a trademark for the term “Local is the New Black” earlier this year.

Is local really the new black? This year was the year geo domains finally received wide scale recognition. A geo-specific blog network launched. Attendance at the GeoDomain Expo surpassed that of some of the mainstream domain conferences. There’s even a geo-domain specific domain sales list.

And geo domains have been selling well, too. Here are some examples of both geo location and long- tail geo domain sales in 2007:

SanJuan.com $150,000
Bellevue.com $150,000
MyrtleBeachCondos.com $120,107
EdistoBeach.com $115,000
Sevilla.com $102,000
Yemen.com $100,000
FollyBeach.com $98,000

(Sources: RickLatona.com and DNJournal)

I’ve bought in, too. I’m working on launching a geo domain, Lakeway.com, to cater to the affluent city outside of Austin. eDirectory is currently working on customizations. Although it’s taking longer than I’d hoped to launch, it should be done by year end.

What do you think? Is local really “the new black”? How will it fair in 2009 compared to this year?

Posted under Domain Sales

7 more registrars added to domain name registrar review site.

Six more registrars are available for reviewing at Registrar Judge, Domain Name Wire’s sister site. Domainers can now review ResellerClub, Dynadot, Gandi.net, DomainDiscover, Joker.com, directNIC, and NameCheap.

The registrars were added at the request of Registrar Judge users. ResellerClub and Dynadot were added last week and since then ResellerClub has shot to the top of the charts.

At Registrar Judge, domain name owners can rate and review domain registrars based on price, security, customer service, and account management tools. These registrar aspects have been voted most important in Domain Name Wire’s annual surveys.

Nearly 100 ratings have been submitted since the site launched November 12. Based on the success of the site, Domain Name Wire will release Parking Judge in the near future. Parking Judge will let users review domain parking services.

Registrar Judge uses a Bayesian ranking system to chart the top registrars. The system takes into consideration all of the star ratings for the registrars (not just “overall”) in addition to the number of positive and negative reviews. The top three registrars are currently:

1. ResellerClub
2. Fabulous
3. GoDaddy

Posted under Domain Registrars

Feedback sought for conference calls with industry executives.

If you’ve never listened to a public company’s shareholder conference calls, they can be rather interesting. The company gives a canned overview of its latest quarter (or year) and goes through its financials. Then financial analysts are allowed to ask completely unscripted questions of the company’s management.

I think we could apply this same model to many domain name service providers to provide two-way feedback and improve industry dialogue.

For example, we could set up a conference call with the head of a major parking company. He would give a short presentation on what’s new with the company’s parking service and then open the floor to questions. Listeners can ask about ways to improve earnings, overall trends in revenue, and suggest new features.

I think this would be very productive for both domainers and the company. Domainers will be able to ask questions without the scripted nature of some company’s “webinars”. The company will get straight forward feedback and the opportunity to build goodwill with its customers.

Just like shareholder’s conference calls, the calls will be recorded for playback and transcripted.

I have a couple questions for readers:

1. Would you participate in these calls?

2. Would you prefer them to be during the workday or in the evening?

Posted under Domain Services

BreakingNews.com is a new news site. But the domain name gives it an instant brand.

BreakingNews.com, a news aggregator that will allow users to interact and socialize, launched earlier this month. Thanks to a great domain name, the web site is already a household brand. PV Media Group acquired the domain name BreakingNews.com earlier this year for an undisclosed amount. It has since worked to launch its vision for a next generation news site.

James McDonald, BreakingNews.com CEO, said acquiring the top domain name for the site was critical to its business plan. “It’s a very important component to the strategy,” said McDonald in an interview with Domain Name Wire. “There are a lot of sites that launch and are pretty good but don’t get a lot of traffic.”

Indeed, BreakingNews.com could have used a web 2.0 misspelled domain or a second tier domain, but the BreakingNews.com domain gives it an instant brand and credibility. The Long Island, New York company also hopes to leverage the domain in search engines for the highly trafficked keyword “Breaking News”.

“Our brand will be built anytime there is breaking news anywhere,” said McDonald. “That’s a big part of a product launch.”

Although still in its early stages, McDonald envisions BreakingNews.com becoming a community where people can view and interact with several different stories (or videos, blogs, etc.) on related topics. They’ll be able to comment, chat, and dissect the news. It will also offer citizen journalism so readers can submit their own news.

“I see a wide gap right now in how customers view news media,” continued McDonald. “Generally they’re viewing [the media] with some distrust.” McDonald points out that you’ll never see a Fox News story on CNN.com. You’ll only see CNN’s angle on the story. At BreakingNews.com you can see the story from several different angles.

In a world of news sites struggling to find an identity, BreakingNews.com can thank its domain name for putting it ahead of the pack.

Posted under Uncategorized

Domain conglomerate files trademark for “Domaining 2.0″.

Domain conglomerate Oversee.net, which owns DomainSponsor , Moniker , and Snapnames , appears to be readying a new marketing campaign around the term “Domaining 2.0″. The company filed for a United States trademark on November 5 for the term “Domaining 2.0″ for use with a laundry list of goods and services. The trademark serial number is 77608409.

Few of the goods and services listed give any clues to new products at Oversee.net, but there are some interesting ones related to the company’s current services:

-market research in the field of domain name traffic
-online auction services and title transfers featuring domain names
-online privacy protection services
-lead generation services, namely, an internet-based technology platform consisting of a customer lead management system for others, the collection and dissemination of consumer information, providing customer lead generation, customer lead origination
-online travel comparison services, online education comparison services
-analyzing internet traffic patterns for optimizing domain pages, namely, computer services for analyzing internet searches for optimizing the content and advertisements on domain name pages

Is it a new marketing message as Oversee.net brings all of its brands under one roof? Or is it a start of something more? Trademark filings often tip off what companies are up to. It was a trademark filing that tipped me off that Network Solutions was starting an expired domain service called NameJet.

Posted under Domain Parking

Fpweb.net, a managed hosting provider, today announced that it now offers Microsoft Office SharePoint Server hosting solutions that are compliant with the Department of Defense (DOD) Directive 5015.2.

The company explains that DOD 5015.2 establishes the policies and responsibilities required for electronic records management. All products awarded with DOD 5015.2 compliance have undergone rigorous testing to meet the standards and ensure compliance. As of May 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 passed the necessary testing to achieve compliance with DOD 5015.2 as a records management application, it claims. It states that it has taken the necessary measures in-house, including the installation of a DOD 5015.2 resource kit, and now commits to offer clients DoD MOSS solutions.

As a provider of several other industry compliant solutions, Fpweb.net decided to tackle this one as well.  “Just because a product is DOD compliant, doesn’t mean the hosting provider is willing to maintain and abide by that compliance,” said Rob LaMear, Fpweb.net President. “We’ve decided to go that extra step and support customers with DOD requirements.”

Posted under Web Hosting